What's the difference between cruel and dastardly?

Cruel


Definition:

  • (n.) See Crewel.
  • (a.) Disposed to give pain to others; willing or pleased to hurt, torment, or afflict; destitute of sympathetic kindness and pity; savage; inhuman; hard-hearted; merciless.
  • (a.) Causing, or fitted to cause, pain, grief, or misery.
  • (a.) Attended with cruetly; painful; harsh.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) China’s new law also restricts the right of media to report on details of terror attacks, including a provision that media and social media cannot report on details of terror activities that might lead to imitation, nor show scenes that are “cruel and inhuman”.
  • (2) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
  • (3) It goes on: "In a reality of ongoing occupation, of solid cynicism and meanness, each and every one of us bears the moral obligation to try to relieve the suffering, do something to bend back the occupation's giant, cruel hand."
  • (4) At one point, Walters speculates that “she looks the same weight as the Duchess – about 8st”; later, he disingenuously asks her to discuss “the cruel comments about being a ‘childless spinster’”, neither telling readers who made those “cruel comments” in the first place, or where.
  • (5) More here: UK regulator urges banks to speed up swaps mis-selling compensation 8.40am GMT More reaction to the decision to send riot police to evict people from the offices of Greece's former state broadcaster this morning , starting with journalist Nick Malkoutzis: Nick Malkoutzis (@NickMalkoutzis) 5 mths after flicking switch on public broadcaster ERT, gov't tries to settle issue by sending riot police to remove remaining staff #Greece November 7, 2013 Nick Malkoutzis (@NickMalkoutzis) While #ERT will be off air for good after police intervention, the stain of how its closure has been handled won't wash away easily #Greece November 7, 2013 Lady Mondegreen (@amaenad) Like a mean stupid dog appeasing a cruel master, the Greek government wants to lay ERT's limp body at the troika's feet.
  • (6) The government confirmed on Tuesday that the second year of the cull had begun, sparking outrage from animal rights activists, campaigners and opposition politicians who claim it is cruel and ineffective.
  • (7) Her friends have been arrested and subjected to what they describe as cruel and inhumane treatment .
  • (8) The jury decided unanimously Thursday that the Colorado attack was cruel enough to justify the death penalty .
  • (9) One of its board members is retired Major General Andrew James “Jim” Molan, co-architect of Tony Abbott’s “Operation Sovereign Borders,” the draconian program relying on the remote island detention centres condemned as cruel and inhumane by multiple respected human rights organisations.
  • (10) MOAB map “Isis were so cruel to us,” said Ahmad.
  • (11) Philip French championed Boyle's career from the outset, describing his debut feature film, Shallow Grave , as "a good piece of storytelling... Hitchcock would have admired its ruthlessness and cruel humour."
  • (12) S an Francisco is now a cruel place and a divided one.
  • (13) In a rather florid letter with classical, literary and historical references, he told her: "You, I already know from happy experience, will not be cruel to my tender flame … As I think of you I shall learn to love you more.
  • (14) Of course the timing was cruel, aimed at throwing the prime minister off balance just before what turned out to be a fairly successful Commons question time.
  • (15) He could be very charming, he could be very cruel, but he mattered and he put something together that was extraordinary."
  • (16) One of the first demands is that the bombardments by the regime and its [Russian] backers must end.” Merkel condemned the air raids on Syria’s second city as “inhumane and cruel”.
  • (17) While Liverpool seemed stretched by cruel successive away fixtures, Chelsea arguably mustered some of their finest attacking football of the campaign through that ferocious opening period.
  • (18) If you follow Twitter regularly, it's easy to believe that many of our fellow citizens are cruel, mean, misogynist and foul-mouthed.
  • (19) We perceive the circumstances of our youth as normal and unexceptional, however sparse or cruel they may be.
  • (20) "It's outrageous and cruel that people are taken off to detention and the families hear nothing until the body shows up with signs of abuse," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

Dastardly


Definition:

  • (a.) Meanly timid; cowardly; base; as, a dastardly outrage.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It blamed "confrontation maniacs" for "[making their] servants of conservative media let loose a whole string of sophism intended to hatch all sorts of dastardly wicked plots and float misinformation".
  • (2) Garak has his own agenda and takes things to a more murderous extreme, forcing Sisko to re-evaluate the dastardly and very un-Starfleet tactics.
  • (3) Meanwhile, the possibility that Mr Juncker might now offer the financial services job to the new British commission nominee, Jonathan Hill, is variously seen as an olive branch, which it manifestly would be, or a dastardly Brussels power grab, which it isn’t.
  • (4) Europe, for all its reputation as some kind of dastardly machine for the promotion of crypto-communism, is really just a hothouse environment in which the promised fruits of neoliberalism are forced into ripening more quickly.
  • (5) That's the dastardly genius of the protocol: it is unrelenting – and effective.
  • (6) His dastardly plot involved cutting Gotham City off from the rest of the world and turning it into an anarchic hellhole.
  • (7) Unlike Black Ops 2, which at least used its drone warfare storyline to question the wisdom of such weaponry in its own comic-book fashion, Ghosts never once suggests that giant city-crushing space spears are a bad idea - at least until those dastardly Hispanic hordes get their hands on them.
  • (8) finale, 70 million Americans were hooked on his signature style of dastardly one-liners and references to anyone of the female sex as "darlin", usually before he gave said "darlin" a good seeing to.
  • (9) As it happens, Edith auditioned for, and won, the part of Rooster, Annie's dastardly kidnapper – her traditionally male kidnapper.
  • (10) One of the appeals of Flynn's writing is how willing she is to make every single person in a novel unsympathetic; dastardly, even.
  • (11) Then, 25 minutes in, those dastardly film-makers engineer a shift: it turns out that the two undergrads they picked to follow are from less privileged backgrounds, outsiders trying to break into a social world that isn't theirs.
  • (12) "Has the statue in your accompanying picture hit on a novel way of ensuring that the much maligned jabulani stops misbehaving in such a dastardly fashion?"
  • (13) On the eve of the killings, he called for action against miners engaged in "dastardly criminal" conduct.
  • (14) But I still admired his quick and accurate decision-making and his skilful feigned attempt at a tackle, if not his dastardly lack of sportsmanship and fair play.” You might just be the only one all right and by admitting that he was “out of position then outpaced” you can see why he could well be City’ undoing this afternoon if a player like Johnson, for example, gets to take him on today.
  • (15) Consider this dastardly request to fix an interest rate that is disappointingly underscored with...a winky face emoticon.
  • (16) By the time Craig had made his way back home, Jason (alright, Dev helped with any detective work that required adult supervision) had assembled all the pieces of Karl's dastardly jigsaw.
  • (17) "It is clear Ramaphosa was directly involved by advising what was to be done to address these 'dastardly criminal actions', which he says must be characterised as such and dealt with effectively."
  • (18) "Yer all orphans and bastards," snarls dastardly foreman Charlie Crout (Craig Parkinson) as oppressed urchins gulp and clench their bumcheeks.
  • (19) A background check to prevent criminals or those with mental illness from purchasing guns: a dastardly attack on civil liberties.
  • (20) In contrast with Breaking Bad's murderous drug kingpin and Mad Men's philandering ad executive, Woodhull is a good man who, in 1778, becomes a spy in order to help George Washington defeat the dastardly British redcoats.